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Veteran precious metals analyst and founder of GoldMoney James Turk claims "cartels" manipulating the gold and silver markets are becoming desperate, as evidenced by recent shifts in the price of bullion.

[...]two things are important. First, the house is rigged, so don't play the game. Stay out of the paper market. Stop using the Comex. Don't be feedstock for the gold cartel. The second thing of course is far more important, which is to buy physical metal. In other words, accumulate physical gold and physical silver; don't trade them....

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Thursday December 20, 2012 15:35It's Time to Look at Companies, not MarketsBy Lawrence ROULSTON:

"Resource markets remain extremely volatile in the face of global economic uncertainty. After a terrible beating in the first half of the year, resource company shares began to recover in August and September. A reversal of that uptrend in October leaves many companies still priced at irrationally low levels.

On a superficial analysis, the junior resource markets are merely treading water, with the TSX Venture Index barely ahead of the low point in June. A closer examination shows a very different story. Many companies are still losing share value, creating an aura of a flat or declining market. In fact, many companies with little or no cash and without tangible assets are still trading well above their fundamental values and will continue to sink.

On the other hand, a few tens of companies with strong management, good projects and which have cash are appreciating in value. We counted at least a dozen companies that we follow in Resource Opportunities which have appreciated by 50% to 200% in the past six months. Those big gains have come at a time when "the market" has been moving sideways.

While investors in general are not putting much value on the development-stage companies, larger mining companies can see the values, as evidenced by several takeover offers in recent weeks. The bid prices in those offers are well above market prices, with at least a couple of the deals priced at two-times the trading prices before the offers"...

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A.M.: Yes. There are so many systemic dangers now but I think the story I’m going to alight on is one I wrote about recently about gold and silver on the COMEX. The bank participation report came out on the 4th of December, and I was able to complete the figures for this year. Bank shorts are at or near record levels. And what is interesting is that with the prices of gold and silver well below the all-time highs there are no profit-takers in the market to sell contracts to close their shorts. And in silver it is very, very alarming. This leads me to think that we are quite likely to have a failure on COMEX and in the silver market in particular.

If you have a failure in silver on COMEX then that is going to affect the gold futures market as well. The West’s central and commercial banks have suppressed the price of both gold and silver by supplying central-bank gold and increased short positions, making prices far too cheap. The result has been a massive transfer of gold and silver to Asia. This is the relevance of the point that you have been raising about Central Banks gold holdings, and it is also going to bring into question the solvency of the bullion banks who are short.

So, I think that while it may not be obvious to many people at the moment, when we look back at the fourth quarter we will see that the conditions were in place for a huge bear squeeze, for silver in particular. I would assume that the short position in gold is more controllable so long as Western Central Banks continue to make bullion available to the bullion banks that are short either on COMEX or with LBMA. But silver is different, nobody has it for sale. There is no silver around.[...]silver position could actually destabilize other derivatives in financial markets. I blame complacency on this matter on Keynesian economists and monetarists saying, “Oh well, gold is just a commodity”. It’s absolute nonsense, we are talking about the most important money to all mankind. If you go into Asia and you ask what is money you will be told, ”Gold and silver”, not rupees, not any paper currencies issued by governments. Gold and silver, that’s what they regard as money, that is where they put their savings. And that is why we are short of it.

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Why are (Smart) Investors Buying 50 Times More Physical Silver than Gold?

As long-time students of precious metals investing, there are certain things we understand. One is that, historically, the availability ratio of silver to gold has had a direct influence on the price of the metals. The current availability ratio of physical silver to gold for investment purposes is approximately 3:1. So, why is it that investors are allocating their dollars to silver at a much higher ratio? What is it that these “smart” investors understand? Let’s have a look at the numbers and see if it’s time for investors to do as a wise man once said and “follow the money.”

Average annual gold mine production is approximately 80 million ounces, which together with an estimated average 50 million ounces of annual recycled gold, totals around 130 million ounces available per year. In comparison, annual mined silver production has averaged around 750 million ounces, while recycled silver is estimated at 250 million ounces per year, which adds up to approximately 1 billion ounces. Using this data, there is roughly 8 times more silver available to buy than there is gold. However, not all gold and silver is available for investment purposes, due to their use in industrial applications. It is estimated that for investment purposes (jewelry, bars and coins), the annual availability of gold is roughly 120 million ounces, and of silver it is 350 million ounces. Therefore, the ratio of physical silver availability to gold availability is 350/120, or ~3:1.1DEN GESAMTEN ARTIKEL LESEN:http://www.zerohedge.com/print/466502

"While the tax package that Congress passed New Year's Day will protect 99 percent of Americans from an INCOME tax increase, MOST of them will still end up paying MORE federal taxes in 2013.

That's because the legislation did nothing to prevent a temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax from expiring. In 2012, that 2-percentage-point cut in the payroll tax was worth about $1,000 to a worker making $50,000 a year.

The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington research group, estimates that 77 percent of American households will face higher federal taxes in 2013 under the agreement negotiated between President Barack OBAMA and Senate Republicans"...

Democrats, facing a challenging fight to retake the House of Representatives in 2014, see a promising new line of attack rising out of the fiscal cliff follies: casting the Republican congressional majority as a terminally dysfunctional body that cannot perform the basic functions of government, let ...